Chapter IV: Part 4

The conclusion of it all is that the work of the minister has narrowed down to the one specific thing to which he is called, the specialized service for which society must look to him alone. He is not to be judged by his learning, his familiarity with public affairs, or his ability as a speaker, altho he needs to possess them all. The one standard by which he is measured is the question of his ability as an exponent of the Christian religion.

Again, the greatness of the preacher as a prophet to-day must be in spite of certain influences which militate against it. Strange to say, one of them is the general economic development of the country, together with the prevalence of ease and prosperity. Our ministers, as a rule, have come from the poorer class of homes and from the more poorly developed sections of the country, especially from the hills, plains, and deserts where solitude prevails. One little hill section in the middle west has supplied most of the ministers for its own and the surrounding States. There is a reason. In fact, there are two.

One is the fact that in the poorer home and countryside there is not much to compete against God for a boy’s thought and attention. Young people brought up there do not enjoy many compensations. They have little to make them pleasure-mad. They live in a very narrow world, and they hunger to get out and do something worth while.

The other is the fact that the religious consciousness is best developed in the solitudes. God has often to look to the hills and the desert for men to be his leaders. Abraham learned to be a friend of God partly because he walked so much in the vast silences. Moses met the great I Am on the mountain side. It was in the hill country that Elkanah and Hannah reared the little lad who was to be the successor of Eli. Our religion itself was cultivated in one of the poorest sections of the old world. With fertile river valleys all about it, barren Palestine gave us our richest heritage of religious literature and leadership. The men living in the richer sections might have done so, but they were too preoccupied with wealth-getting. They had no time to listen among the silences for the voice of God.

Unfortunately, the temper of the present age is not so conducive as it might be to great preaching. There is a tendency to discount the value of the prophetic function manifest even on the part of some quite religious people. One may find in almost any current publication a statement or inference that it is not the spoken word but the acted deed that counts. The fact is that both count. It took both Moses, the man of deeds, and Aaron, the man of words, to lead Israel to the realization of its hope. It took both Ezra, the scribe, and Nehemiah, the cupbearer to the king, to rebuild the walls and the temple of Jerusalem. It has always taken the prophet and the toiler together to achieve human progress in the best sense.

We have great preachers to-day. They have terrific competition to meet, but when one closes his ears to the clash of the noises about him he can still hear the voice of the prophet lifted clear and distinct. As of old, there are small prophets and false ones. As of old, at the same time, there are great prophets and true. However, if we are to keep preachers and preaching great they must have every encouragement that can be given them.

The Heart Interest in Preaching (1922)

A great deal of otherwise good preaching fails of its purpose. It may be that no flaw can be found in it from the purely homiletic viewpoint, yet it fails to get the verdict for God and righteousness. Often this happens because the sermon has been considered as an end within itself. The preacher has failed to take into account the human values involved in his work. He has prepared his sermon with the one idea of making a perfect product.

His more successful brother has gone at the task in quite another way. He has worked no less earnestly and persistently, but he has seen more than the paper before him. He has looked past his study table and beyond his book shelves out into the busy world where his people live. He has seen them toiling, hoping, struggling, and suffering. He has thought of their heartaches and problems, of their aspirations and difficulties, of the drag that sordid situations and drab years put upon their souls. He has felt their temptations, their discouragements, and their limitations. His heart has gone out and felt the weight of their burden with them.

Then he has searched Scripture, history, science, literature, and life for something that will help them in their fight. In some instances, at least, he has found it. No wonder his work catches on and succeeds. He has sensed the human side, and seen what it is that makes the need for preaching. If there were no human problems along the road that leads to God, then the pulpit might as well be abolished.

To such a man the sermon he has prepared is not a fetish, but a message. He delivers it not merely that it may be admired, but that it may be minted into a blessing for the people before him. He knows what is in the hearts behind the Sunday clothes down in the pews, and he is trying to answer their questions and meet their needs.

The Great Compulsion (1928)

What do we mean when we speak of the call to the ministry? Some mean a wonderful dream, some an angel visitation, some a strange ecstasy, and some merely the notion that they can speak well. These things may all have their places, but they are uncertain. The one sure and enduring sign is the great compulsion.

The Book of Exodus relates how Moses as a young man went out one day and looked upon his people’s burdens. That was one of the great determining hours in his life. It was so because when he saw his people’s burdens their weight rolled onto his own heart. That was the last peaceful day he ever saw, for our peace is the price we pay for greatness. Thereafter, his days and nights were troubled with that strange mingling of hope and despair that comes to a leader. He was under the great compulsion.

John tells how an angel brought him a little book and told him to eat it. He did so, and in his mouth it was sweet as honey, but as soon as he had swallowed it, the sweetness changed to bitterness. That is the way with the word of truth. We must absorb it. The study of it is sweet, but the weight of care it lays upon us is bitter. It places us under the great compulsion.

One morning Jesus slipped out in the gray dawn, stood on the slope overlooking the quiet rooftops of Jerusalem, and wept. What so moved Him? It was the difference He saw between the city that was and the city that might have been, the world that was and the world that might have been. He had dreamed of better things and had discovered how difficult was their realization. The great compulsion was upon Him.

Key words are interesting in the vocabulary of such a one as Paul. One of his favorite words was _bondslave_. Another was _must_. A heavy sense of obligation was upon him. The feeling that took the vocal form of that word drove him over land and sea, planting the seeds of the kingdom life. A great vision had gripped his soul. A dream had possessed him. He could never rest again, for the great compulsion was upon him.

The Minister and His Reading (1928)

What the world and the spirit of the times have done to the reading habits of the public in general, they have also done to the minister. In the case of the public, they have sought to substitute the motion picture, the tabloid newspaper, and the confession magazine for the bookshelf. In the case of the minister, they seek to take the hours once devoted to the enrichment of the mind and dedicate them to the puttering things so fondly called practical duties—organizations, promotion, community activities.

Where the world leaves off, the church begins, for it is not wholly free from infection with the virus of materialism. Often the very disciples of Jesus get the idea that it is more important to make a stir in the world of today than to build life for the eternities.

We hear frequent complaints that there is a dearth of commanding preaching. The wonder is not that there are so few challenging voices in the pulpit, but that there are as many as there are when so many forces are joined in a giant conspiracy to throttle the spirit of prophecy. There is not enough encouragement to men to be great preachers. Yet wherever there is a voice that speaks with authority and not as the Scribes, there are people to hear it, though it be in the slums of a city or the depths of a forest. There will be plenty of such voices when the world and the church allow men to get back to the reflective life, and when ministers themselves once more determine to spend much time with the truth of God.

Why did the world’s crowning religion come out of a poor, barren little country, when there were Egypt, and Babylonia, and Greece? It was because Israel was poor enough and secluded enough to walk with God. The shepherd and the vinedresser caught the “still small voice” that was lost in the rush and roar about the merchant in the marketplace. Egypt was too busy with her civilization. Babylonia was too busy with her pleasure. Greece was too busy with her culture. The spirit of prophecy is found where are the conditions under which men can dream dreams and see visions. Great preaching will never come out of a maze of material interests. Shall we so soon forget that the first great task of Jesus was to win the victory over the tempting power of material things and that one of His last triumphant statements was that He had overcome the world?

They used to say that the ideal plan for a minister is to divide his day equally between the cultivation of his mind and the work of his parish. If one would follow such a plan faithfully through a long pastorate he would have two things—a well-furnished mind and a well-developed church. However, it does not matter so much which plan one chooses. It matters most that he does have a plan that provides a suitable place for reading and study.

It is not the present purpose to exalt the importance of reading beyond its due. Other interests are important, but this happens to be a call back to books, back to the delight of kings’ treasuries and queens’ gardens, back to the refreshing that comes from truth’s ever-flowing well, back to the replenishing of those powers upon which a minister must rely when every other key to success lies broken and useless.

A certain college professor used to advise his students to get and use three books, even if they could have no others. He said it did not matter how cheaply made they were, if they were only genuine and complete. He told them to get an unabridged dictionary, and study it for words; to get a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare, and study it for usage; and to get a copy of the King James Bible, and study it for style. These, together with a standard encyclopaedia and perhaps a good Bible dictionary, form the necessary foundation for any ministerial library.

No minister needs to be convinced of the wonders and beauties of the English Bible. All understand its value, but some find it difficult to invest the time and effort necessary to that unusual understanding of its message which the ministry must have. It is not difficult to show the public the charm of this wonderful book, but the one who reveals that charm must first have seen it himself.

Next to the Bible comes a vast and growing field of professional material dealing with the work of the ministry. This the minister must take into account. If the physician, the lawyer, the teacher, the business man, or the farmer can continue to be a success only by keeping abreast of the newest thought and discovery in his field, certainly the minister is in no position to claim exemption from the rule.

Occasionally we hear a minister boast that he knows nothing about Theology. Some even seem to regard such a claim as a qualification for the most serious and important work on earth. For a minister to make such a boast is exactly as intelligent as it would be for a lawyer to advertise that he is handling cases involving property and human rights without knowing the principles of his work, or for a physician to say that he is taking into his hands the life and happiness of human beings without a knowledge of drugs or surgery. If a minister really knows nothing about Theology, it is wisest to conceal the fact, if possible, until he learns something about it. A community soon spots a man who does not know his business.

A minister must find some way to gain a wide general information and culture. The person who said that he must know everything was not far wrong. This is true not only because he is preaching to an increasingly well-informed people, but also because he must interpret God to all of these people in the terms with which they are familiar. Each of his hearers lives and works in a limited field and can get on with a knowledge of that field alone, but the field with which the minister needs to be familiar is unlimited because it touches all the others.

No minister can afford to neglect good fiction. It often tells more truth than fact does. Upton Sinclair’s _The Jungle_ did. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ did. The parables of Jesus did. Aside from its entertainment value, fiction cultivates the imagination, and without that, no man can be a powerful public speaker. If one will speak in pictures, the people will hear and understand. One of the reasons why the common people heard Jesus gladly was the fact that His words always appealed to the imagination.

A minister needs all kinds of books, including those which make one laugh. Let us not be victims of the idea that holiness excludes the sunshine. The man who loses the song and laughter out of his life is unfit for the ministry until he gets them back. Clean and genuine humor should be on the minister’s bookshelf and in his heart.

A minister should read some of the things he dislikes and with which he disagrees. There is little growth in reading or hearing only what one already knows or believes. One owes it to truth also to know the other side. Even if he is certain that the other side is wrong, he should know its claims and how to meet them. The physician must study diseases before he can apply remedies. Many ministers have made too few clinical observations of the error and sin that are ruining the world.

It is sometimes said that this kind of thing means too much religion of the head and too little of the heart. You cannot separate these two things. They are parts of the same. Physics tells us that radiant heat and light are one and the same. All heat makes light. All light gives off heat. Whatever illuminates warms. Whatever warms illuminates.

On the evening of the first Easter, two disciples were on their way to their simple home when a stranger drew near. He took the road with them and talked to them about the meaning of the Scriptures. Entering the house with them, He ate, and departed. Then they knew it had been the risen Lord. They said: “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us in the way?”

The burning heart always goes with the understanding head. One cannot face the fair page of truth, see what God has wrought, and contemplate the goodness and love of the divine heart, with a soul unswept by the tides of spiritual feeling. Perhaps more tarrying at the feet of the Great Teacher of all truth would renew the testimony of the two disciples of Emmaus.

It must be so, for religion does not belong alone to heart or head. It belongs to the whole life. We may find God in the oratory where the soul rises heavenward upon the wings of prayer. We may find Him in the temple where arch and pillar cast dim shades about us, and the altar lends us sanctuary from the world. We may find Him in the hour of unusual spiritual fervor and in the great emotional experience of a lifetime. We may find Him in the hot, white field of service to the troubled, the burdened, and the broken among men. We may find Him in the careful statement of a creed, the formal beauty of a liturgy, or the simple prayer of a moment of contrition. We may also find Him in the field of thought and knowledge where we behold Him and His kingdom of unsearchable riches through the magic gateway of the covers of a book.

Preaching to College Students (1928)

Preaching to college students is one of the most exacting of homiletic responsibilities. This is the case not so much because students are critical as because they are the world in the making, and the tomorrows will be just about as religious as they are. By some means the message must be put across to them.

Preaching to such a constituency is no longer the task of the few. Almost every preacher has more or less of it to do because the influence of the college now reaches everywhere. In the university centers we deal with students in large groups, but in the smallest country community one finds at least a few. A sermon must be as worthwhile for the few as for the many. So the problem is one of general interest.

The presence of students in his congregation should be a great blessing to a minister. It is a high challenge to him to do his best work. The mind of the student is alert, and his work, so far as it goes, is with current data. Therefore, the man who interests him must be wide awake and well informed. For such an influence any minister should be deeply grateful.

Great numbers of college students and graduates are in the churches. Still greater numbers are not unwilling to be, and will be when the motive is clear. But the reason must certainly be established. Will the student derive benefit from the sermon? If not, he is not interested and that is the end of it. If so, he is interested and will respond. This is only as it should be.

The average student likes to be preached to and dealt with as a human being. True, the species includes a few mutations who like to think they belong to some other order of creation, but most students know better and the rest will have abundant opportunity to learn better.

The college student is nothing but a boy or girl from the farm dwelling, the village home, or the city mansion, translated into a campus setting. The law of adaptation operates, and certain temporary colorations, habits and appendages develop, all of which will pass with the next change of environment. These youngsters are still flesh and blood however and it may be said of them as it may be said of anybody that their need is for the universal gospel preached in the most honest and interesting possible way.

The student is dealt with as such during the days of the week. His professors may be depended upon not to let him forget that he is a student. When the worship hour comes he is glad of an opportunity to forget it for the time being and to occupy the honorable position of a human being made in the spiritual image of his God.

It is a great mistake to preach to students in the terms and imagery of campus life. The preacher who starts in to show his audience how much he has engaged in athletics, how familiar he is with fraternity and social life, and how finally he has solved the old and largely imaginary problem of the conflict between science and religion, will only succeed in making himself ridiculous. Students do not come to church to hear about things concerning which they know more than the preacher does. They come to hear about things of which he is presumed to know more than they do. Therefore, the safest as well as the most helpful thing he can do is to keep to religion.

It is also a mistake to suppose that the student mind reacts unfavorably against serious things. It may appreciate the witticism which helps to illuminate a serious point in the discussion, and a first class reductio ad absurdum nearly always clinches a proposition, but mere buffoonery will make a small and brief appeal. The person who attempts thus to denature the gospel he preaches will not meet with permanent favor.

This is the case because the student mind is essentially serious. One might not think so after a superficial observance of student actions, but it is so nevertheless. The very laughter and jesting one hears in student circles often mask the most earnest questionings, the deepest longings, and the most serious attitudes.

So long as one keeps himself, as he should do, within the limits of honest conviction, and so long as one speaks, as he should speak, in the spirit of love and good will, no other class of people in the world is so ready to have him be brutally frank as are college students. In fact, they discount him if he shows any evidence of evasion or accommodation. They may be right about some things and wrong about other things, but they are honest in all things, and they expect him to be the same.

Any one of the fields of thought and knowledge is a serious matter with the honest investigator. It is so dealt with in the classroom and the laboratory. To the student religion is just one more field to be explored. If he does not care to explore it, he does not bother. If he does care to explore it, he does not regard it as a joke. The person who thus approaches it with a sincere purpose should receive honest help.

All this leads me to the point where I can say that one of the fine things about the student mind is that it has discarded all traditions and prejudices. It approaches any matter with a disposition to find and face the facts, whatever the consequences may be. It is a real _tabula rasa_, upon which one may write—provided he has a stylus that is sharp enough.

Surely this is an opportunity to bring delight to the soul of the honest preacher. The most deadening thing in the world, intellectually and spiritually, is the practice of preaching platitudes and maintaining traditions which are proven, outworn, or unimportant—maybe all three. The most uncomfortable position in which any sincere preacher can find himself is one in which such a type of service is demanded.

The preacher to college students finds himself in no such position. He may go anywhere he likes within the limits of the field of truth. He has no traditions to maintain. He is bound by no trammels of creed or dogma. He is not checked by any barriers of prejudice. His way is open. He has but to walk in it in the spirit of reverence and honesty. He is dealing with adventurous minds whose one concern is truth. The mind of Jesus was such a one, and such an audience really challenges a preacher to approach questions in the spirit of the Great Teacher.

This is the process that is going to break down the artificialities and fan out the chaff of unreality from religion. Perpetuating systems is poor business, but adventuring in the field of truth is a high privilege. That is what the preacher to college students must do. Granted that it is in the field of religion, his one test for homiletic material is the question whether it is true.

One of the most common mistakes made in the popular and superficial analysis of the student mind is the assumption that it is essentially a radical mind. This often becomes the basis of a great homiletic error in preaching to students.

A comparative few students are radical, just as are a comparative few taken from any group one might mention. But with the mass it is not so. The great majority of college students are probably more conservative than the majority of people outside the university world. They think carefully, act with deliberation, and go quietly about their way while a few exceptions to the rule take the soap box and loudly demand the immediate reversal of all things.

I should say that about the last place to go to start a revolution of any kind would be the average college campus. Yet the campus mind is alive to the evolution that is going on in everything—including itself.

The student mind would be properly impatient of a static or reactionary viewpoint, but it is little concerned with wildeyed radicalism of any kind. The preacher who is most likely to reach its processes is the one who is honest, fearless, and open-minded, and yet who is conservative in the sense that he abandons a position only when he has found sufficient reason for believing that another one is better. The preacher who shows a conservatism which takes care to be progressive will commend himself and his message to the student hearer.

The presence of students in one’s congregation should save him from the pitiful fate of ceasing to grow, and thereby becoming old. They are an advancing race, and it is his privilege to advance with them. If he does so, the day will come when he can look back across the years and find satisfaction in the thought that he has had a real part in the making of the history of his and succeeding times—that of building the solidness and savour of ancient truth into the life of the new world.

Some Problems of the Preacher (1928)

The day one offers himself to God for the work of the Christian ministry he takes upon himself a set of serious personal problems, along with his problems of leadership and service. He proposes to do God’s work, and that means also to be God’s man. He must be that amid difficult conditions, under constant scrutiny, and in the face of frequent misjudgment.

One of his problems is to keep the spirit of reverence in his life. Human nature tends to handle ever more familiarly the things with which it has to do. Nadab and Abihu would have been afraid to offer strange fire if they had not allowed themselves to become too familiar with the things of the sanctuary. God, the church, and human hearts are all things our relationship to which should hush our souls.

Another of his problems, and one of his chief ones, is to keep the stamp of reality upon himself and his ministry. Holy tones, unnatural attire, and affected mannerisms are all banes to the ministry. They have cost many a man his usefulness, and limited that of many others. The church would gain immeasurably if today every one of her army of ministers would undertake in a simple human way to represent normal manhood at its best. Certainly that is what Jesus did.

Another of his problems is that of his social contacts. If he does not appear in public he is branded as a recluse. If he appears too much he becomes known as a loafer. He must find the golden mean. To know how much to appear, how to appear, when to appear, and the secret of mingling and dealing with people of all kinds without compromising one’s self with any is a fine art, and happy is the one who masters it.

Still another of his problems is how to keep growing. Too many ministers become unacceptable in middle life, not because they have aged, but because they have ceased to grow. The most pitiful thing about these men is that none of them seems to know quite what is wrong. Such a time need not come. It does not come to those who read, and think, and keep interested in and sympathetic toward the life of a growing world.

The Ambassador (1929)

A minister is an ambassador of the Kingdom of God to the kingdom of this world’s life. If he will remember that, and act accordingly, it will both save him from many mistakes and help him to many successes.

An ambassador has just one business. It is to represent, without wavering, change, or compromise, the interests of his country at a foreign court.

If he allows himself to become more loyal to the people to whom he goes than to the Ruler who sends him, he is worse than a poor ambassador; he is a traitor. The pitiful message of the story of The Golden Calf is that a spiritual leader forgot that his business was to serve God, and surrendered to the idea that it was to please the public.

The ambassador must remember that he is at a foreign court. That means that he cannot engage indiscriminately in what others do, that he must not become too deeply rooted in the alien life. He must keep his affections and loyalties fixed where they belong. At the same time, since he is among strangers, and since he is his own country incarnated in flesh and blood before them, he must be courteous and seek to make his every word and act worthy of their respect.

An ambassador is often called a diplomat. Indeed, a poor diplomat could not be a good ambassador. Frequently he has exacting and sometimes he has strained situations to handle. He must do so in the least offensive way and, at the same time, in the way best calculated to carry the point for his King.

For, above all, an ambassador must be faithful to his own country. He must not involve it, nor compromise it, nor surrender its interests in any way. While he must properly respect the country and people to which he is accredited, his business is to cooperate in establishing and maintaining the supremacy of his own government.

It is a wonderful thing to be a minister, because a minister is an ambassador of the Kingdom of God.

Let the Minister Know Life (1929)

The young ministers used to have to learn Hebrew, Greek, and all kinds of ponderous tomes of Theology. Now they must learn, instead, the technique of the various practical enterprises in which the church is engaged.

Probably a young minister needs to know something of both. But he needs to know another thing. He needs to know life.

No man is prepared to engage in the cure of souls until he has seen the world as it is; until he knows what saints and sinners alike are doing, saying, and thinking; and until he has seen, understood, and felt for human life at its best and at its worst.

Unless he has seen and known these things, he is like a man trying to practice medicine without having observed how the body is built and without having looked not only on the beauty of its health but also upon the horror and loathsomeness of its diseases. To look upon these things may not be pleasant, but to be helpless against them is less so.

A minister is not a near-angel to be perfumed and laid away in tissue paper for fear of some contamination. He is a physician to the spiritual lives of men. He has a real battle to fight. He has conditions to face that are ugly, and fierce, and perilous. What can he do with them unless he knows about them? What can he know about them if his experience is limited to leading the devotions for society meetings and wearing correct dress at afternoon teas?

A minister needs to go about, less as a minister and more as a man. He needs to see, and hear, and know enough to understand the mind and heart of the world.

After a young minister graduates from the seminary and before he begins his public work, he may need to go to the solitudes for meditation, but he needs also to do another thing. He needs to go down where men live their lives and, keeping his own heart clean, learn at first hand what are the problems that he must help them to solve.

The Yielding of Aaron (1929)

The story of the golden calf is a familiar one. Moses was holding a meeting with God—a habit that began with the burning bush. His absence was prolonged. The people grew restless. They felt that the cure lay in worship, but why not worship with a little novelty in it? Why not get out of the rut?

So they brought their jewelry to Aaron and besought him to make them a golden god. The idea of an unseen God was too difficult for them. Too, a golden god would be much easier to get on with. It would lay down no laws and make no ethical requirements. Too, golden gods were the style among their neighbors. They asked him to make them such a god.

Then Aaron made the mistake of his life. As a spiritual leader, he should have been listening to see what God would say. But he turned his ear toward the congregation instead, and listened to see what the leading members would say. His business was to lead the congregation up to the foot of God’s throne. But he allowed himself to be persuaded to attempt to reduce God to the level of human weakness and ignorance.

One of the supreme temptations of every religious leader is to seek public approval by the adaptation of the principles and standards of religion to public tastes, ideals, and desires. A thousand voices are raised on every side to urge him on in his error.

The path of salvation is still a straight and narrow way. All that we can do or say will not change that fact. When we widen it, plant primroses in it, and take the stones out of it, we no longer have a path of salvation. Then real followers of God no longer care to walk in it. They like the challenge of the harder road.

We cannot adapt God to the world. Whoever tries it fails, just as Aaron did. We cannot change truth, nor make over religion, nor revise the divine law. The God Isaiah saw in the temple was high and lifted up. The fact that Isaiah did not wait for the Lord to come down to his level, but began the long climb up to God’s level, is what made the prophet great.

The Necessary Asset—Friends (1917)

You cannot get on in the world without friends. You tread the golden bridge of friendship over many a chasm which could not otherwise be crossed. Friendless people must always languish on the side of hopelessness.

Friendships do not come by chance, and neither do they force themselves upon you. Friendship, like everything else worth while, is the reward of proper effort.

Friends must be made in the spirit of unselfishness. They are an advantage, it is true, but they must not be sought merely for purposes of advantage. Nothing wins friends so well nor keeps them so long as the unselfish disposition to be helpful. The most valuable friend is the friend who is one for friendship’s sake alone.

A strong friendship is seldom effervescent. The cordiality which is always foaming over is apt to have about the consistency and permanence of the foam which it resembles. The best type of friendship is poised, constant, steady, and true to the end. Dependability is worth more in friendship than is mere demonstration. You can expect this quality in others only when it characterizes your own attitude toward others.

When you speak of an absent friend, it would be well to imagine him present and listening to what is being said. Speak as gently of those who do not hear as of those who do. Speak frankly to the friend beside you, for insincerity never yet aided a friendship. Speak kindly of the friend who is away from you, for unkind speech has yet to win its first victory for the speaker.

Speak of your enemies as though they were your friends, and some day they may become your friends. A kindly tongue and a helping hand for all would soon garland the earth with sunshine and happiness.

Building a World Brotherhood (1918)

Among the most valuable results of a thing are often those which are classed as bi-products. This is true of a certain inevitable social effect of Christianity. That effect is brotherhood.

The natural tendency of the Christian religion is to make men understand the fact that from the beginning they were created brothers. As far it fails to accomplish this task, it will have failed of its social purpose. As far it succeeds, it will have wrought the foundations of the better day.

Such is the tendency of the Christian faith, because Jesus recognized no artificial and arbitrary barriers. The lines across which nations and social classes scorned to step he threw out of his consideration, and crossed them regardlessly. In his estimation of things, a man was a man. He could be no more and there was no disposition to ever rate him as less.

The world has arrived at this viewpoint slowly, but as surely as it does arrive at this viewpoint, its strifes will cease. Wars and troubles come from clannish exclusiveness and class hatred and distrust.

When those who belong to such classes as capital and labor forget their social differences and emphasize their fraternal relations, they will forget that they were ever pitted against one another. The only way the problem can ever be solved is by the elimination of the caste lines which separate the contending elements. The employer must remember that the workman is a capitalist in time and muscle, and the employe must remember that his employer is also a workingman.

The Laughing Man (1919)

Shakespeare was a prophet of many ages beside his own; Dickens was a champion of the lowly and oppressed; Scott was a delicate weaver of the fairy fabric of romance; but Victor Hugo was an analyst of human life and experience. Without adornment or polish, his books are cross-sections of the feelings and doings of men. His knife cuts deep enough to reveal the workings of the inner laws.

In Jean Valjean, the criminal, we have the story of a man who taught the world how low a man can fall and how well a fallen man can rise. In Gwynplaine, the laughing man, we have the story of one who taught the world how close may be the relation between the laughing countenance and the serious spirit.

In the story of Gwynplaine two things stand out supremely. The first is the power and significance of a smile that could not come off. The second is the supreme importance and sacredness of humanity.

The smile that could not come off was written upon his countenance with a knife. Gwynplaine was the son of an English nobleman. Stolen when a baby by a band of wandering showmen, he was trained for exhibition. They operated upon his helpless baby features and shaped them into a perpetual grin. From that day forth, no matter what were the feelings within him or the outlook in the path ahead of him, he carried a laughing face. He had been fashioned into a curiosity, but in some ways a very wholesome kind of curiosity.

Had the story of Gwynplaine never done more than to remind the world of the value of laughter, it would have served its time and purpose well. No generation can well get on without those who make it their business to keep the smiles alive on the faces of the people. The world may laugh at them and pass them by as clowns, but the ages will have to honor them for having kept weary hearts hopeful when everything seemed to be crumbling away beneath them.

The place of the humorist in literature is sometimes placed at a discount, but not properly so. The maker of fun whose humor was clean and genuine is a benefactor of his age, not to say a minister of righteousness. The hand of Justice lays an unfading wreath of honor upon the grave of the man who has helped to keep the world glad. He has planted roses where otherwise there would have been only thorns. He has scattered beauty and light where otherwise the shadows would have been left to reign supreme.

One of the chief points in the story of Gwynplaine, however, was the fact that his smile was permanent and unfading. It was written indelibly upon his features and could be affected by no tempest either of joy or pain. His soul might be weary and his courage dead, but the world could never find it out by looking at his face. However often he may have been a troubled man, through it all he was a laughing man.

It is all well enough to smile when one is gay, but the real hero is the one who keeps on smiling after the world has turned blue before his gaze. Anyone can look happy when he _is_ happy, but only the unusual man can keep a merry countenance when hopes die, ties are sundered, dreams crash in shattered fragments, and the rich promises of life prove to have been empty mirages of vain expectation. The smile “that cannot come off” is the smile worth while.

The happiest-faced woman I ever knew was one whose life story would cast a tremor of dread upon any company. She had faced her floods of sorrow, had shed her tears, and then had come off with the victory of an undying cheerfulness which never inflicted upon another the troubles which had been hers.

One day it was discovered that Gwynplaine, the wandering showman, was a man of noble blood. As such, he was entitled to a seat in the House of Lords. On the night when he went to take his seat among the peers of England, many curious eyes were fastened upon his grinning features. He sat and listened to the speeches. Eloquent things were being said, but they did not bear the note of thoughtfulness of the needs and rights of the lowly. These were men who had never tasted the lot of the poor. He could never forget the need and the neglect which he had seen and known.

Then a dramatic thing happened. Gwynplaine rose in his place as though to speak. A suppressed titter swept over the great chamber. He opened his lips and began to speak. At the sound of his words the wave of merriment subsided. They carried a burden of heartbreak, though they fell from grinning lips. “My lords,” he said, “I bring you news—news of the existence of mankind.”

This was the message the assembly needed to hear. Executive chambers and halls of legislation had been all too slow in welcoming it. When it came, it fell from the lips of a noble showman with a perpetual grin upon his face.

Gwynplaine had a full heart, and it was full of the needs and the burdens of men. One word was ringing back and forth through the chambers of his thought. That word was Humanity. In it was represented the outstanding fact in human thinking—the fact of the existence of humanity. It suggested the highest aim of all government—the good of humanity. It pointed out the path of all proper human endeavor—the advancement of humanity.

Humanity has been the one great concern of the Almighty Himself. He measures the good or the evil of a thing by the question of its helpfulness or its hurtfulness of people. He brooded over the race until it grew to manhood. When it sinned He suffered for it. He has never hesitated to go to any length for the sake of people. Such is also the spirit of those who enter into the secrets of His plans.

The word humanity is not limited to a fortunate few, but it includes those of every station; it does not refer to a single race or color, but it has a place for all mankind; it does not mean a given economic or industrial class, but it covers the cases of employer and employe alike; it does not stop at a given social caste, but in its plan one is as good as another. Humanity includes all men, and the person who has never yet taken it into his heart has not yet developed as great a heart as the man of the future will find it necessary to have.

Humanity knows no dividing line, and whoever lays them down will simply sow the seeds of sorrow and trouble. Class consciousness is an evil thing, no matter by what class it is possessed. Wars come from national lines of division in sympathy and fraternity. Strifes come from industrial and social dividing lines. There is no place in the creative plan for jealousy and enmity.

The world can never come to its golden year until it has made manhood the one basis for the estimate of a man. It must recognize good as good, and evil as evil, regardless of where they are found; it must hold light to be light and darkness to be darkness, whosoever they may be; and men must be recognized as the most important element in the scheme of things.

When the day of settled peace comes again, and the world once more sits clothed and in its right mind, our business will be the protection, nurture, and uplift of humanity. Meanwhile, may there come some teacher who can lead the peoples to think of one another in terms of fraternity, and teach each man to think of each other man as a neighbor and to trust him as a friend.

The Safe Foundations for a League of Nations (1919)

The thinking majority of people in America and among other nations know very well what they want. A designing minority may be willing to continue the bloodthirsty ways of the past for reasons of either personal gain or private preference. The thoughtful majority, however, desire some reasonable assurance that the peace of the world will not again be broken.

An intelligible plan for world peace has for a long while been taking shape in the minds of unselfish national leaders. The war and the new world conditions occasioned by it have crystallized that plan into a purpose. We call it the League of Nations. It will be, so to speak, a kind of United States of the World.

The plan is a promising one. Many far-seeing thinkers wished for it years before the outstanding national leaders were influenced by a world emergency to become champions of it. It simply means the extension of our organization for common protection, welfare, and progress into international proportions.

Between individuals we have succeeded in reducing brawling to a minimum. The same means, internationally applied, will reduce it to a minimum between nations. We have declared that individuals shall not carry weapons to the menace of others. We can tell nations that they too must lay aside their guns for the good of the public peace. We have established means whereby offenders can be brought to justice and disputes settled between individual litigants. We can establish the same means for preventing lawbreaking and for the settlement of disputes in the case of nations. We have established police power to enforce the decrees of our local, state, and national courts. International law can be given the same authority in the same way.

We will not be wise to conclude, however, that all we need is a League of Nations. No mere material organization can constitute complete assurance that men will henceforth live at peace with one another. Such an organization would be a great force. As in the case with local, state, and federal laws, its mandates would keep some people at peace through their good will and others through their fear of the consequences of disobedience. It will take more than a League of Nations, however, to make the peace of the world certain and permanent.

This is true because the issues of life are spiritual. The strongest forces are not physical. The force of opinion is greater than the power of guns, and the union of spiritual attitudes and standards is stronger than any bond of mere organization.

The value of whatever solution for our problem we may adopt will be determined not so much by the plan itself as by the spiritual basis of the plan. If the hearts of men are not right toward one another, the vision of peace will be as idle a dream as it was in the past years. If the relations of men, one with another, are right, then we may feel that the peace of the world is already assured.

We may have an organized super-state. The true super-state will exist, however, not in the outward form of any organization but in the spiritual attitude of the hearts of men. In other words, if it is to exist at all, it must exist in the fact of brotherhood and in the conditions generated by the fraternal spirit. The true super-state might as well be called the kingdom of love. It can be nothing else and fulfil its mission.

The wreck of the German Empire is the ruin of an attempt to found a super-state upon the wrong basis. Germany smothered the fraternal spirit, prostituted genius, reduced her schools to media for her propaganda, and killed the idea of unselfishness in the minds of her people. She bent everything to the making of an empire which was to be the wonder of the world in power, wealth, and efficiency. Like the presumptuous Babel of an older day, this audacious plan fell in scattered ruins, after having been the means of drenching the world in blood.

Whoever allows his mind to harbor a dream of power, wealth, efficiency, or commercial supremacy on any other basis than that of brotherhood should remember the name of Germany and take due warning. A new world is now in process of building. Whatever we may have in it, we should permit the presence of nothing which does not rest upon a fraternal foundation. If we have to choose between being a people of tender hearts and possessing the glory and dominion of the world, we can best afford to choose to be people of tender hearts.

The spirit of malice and distrust was the powder train by which the magazine of the world’s fury was exploded. The hands of both the crafty and the foolish helped to lay it. It has always been so, and will always be so until such work is done no more. While men distrust one another, look for unworthy motives in one another, or talk of and prepare for war with one another, there will be no end of strife. When men of all classes, nations, and races learn to genuinely love one another, the day of strife will cease.

Some wars have been wars of punishment, but when the people of the earth learn to do right, there will be nothing to punish. With the life of the world actuated by unselfish motives, there will be no need for the avenger to march on errands of death, made necessary by some outrage or injustice. Until that time, peace will remain dim in the promise of any plan that we can formulate. Is there any reason why men should not do right? If duty were impossible, all creation would be a mockery and a moral contradiction.